Today we’re excited to announce OpenTok for Customer Service (OTCS). This is our first solution built on top of the OpenTok platform, and will make it faster and easier for our partners to implement face-to-face video chat for customer service applications.

Over the past few years, we’ve had the opportunity to keep a close watch on use case trends in the video space. One common thread was present amongst the majority of the use cases that we encountered: customer service. Whether it was pre-sales support, post-sales customer assistance or expert consultations they all required some basic call functionality that wasn’t available through the standard OpenTok APIs.

Until now, our partners would have needed to build a complex system to make a basic customer service application work. OpenTok for Customer Service simplifies the complexity down to a handful of server-side and client-side APIs.

OTCS caters to three kinds of customer service models:

Traditional call center setup

Scheduled appointments

“Call my rep” functionality

So how exactly does OTCS work?

On the client side, OpenTok for Customer Service helps the customer and representative set up their hardware, and get ready for the conversation.

On the server-side, the partner will be able to define their own matching algorithms to make sure customers speak to the right representatives. Then, once matched, representatives can leverage typical pre-call, mid-call, and post-call activities specific to their interaction. Whether that is putting a customer on hold, transferring a customer, bringing in another representative, co-viewing a screen, co-piloting a shopping cart, and more.

Want to get involved? Learn more about OpenTok for Customer Service, and sign up for the beta program.